People have been arguing/debating over the value of these 2 for some time now.
Because of this constant debate, we decided to put some perspective into the argument. Let the numbers decide.
If you are a smart marketer, you will follow the data.
You can still try out new stuff before you have the data, it’s OK to experiment, but it’s even better to make sure you have overview over some of the most popular marketing channels out there.
Instead of choosing sides, we are going to provide you with some interesting statistics and let you decide which one is winning at the game of marketing: email or social media.
Email – old, but effective; Social Media – new, hip, ROI not so great
Depending on your industry/niche you might be inclined to like one over the other.
Email VS Social Media Stats
- As of 2013, there are 3.6 billion email accounts (Source)
- 91% of consumers check their email daily (Source)
- People spend 13 hours of their workweek in their email inbox. (Source)
- 74% of consumers prefer to receive commercial communications via email (Source)
- 54% of emails sent by businesses are marketing messages (Source).
- 60% of marketers believe email marketing produces positive ROI (Source)
- 66% of consumers have made a purchase online as a result of an email marketing message (Source).
- Email marketing has an ROI of 4,300% (Source).
- 17% of marketers don’t track or analyze email metrics for their organization (Source)
- 76% of email opens occur in the first two days after an email is sent (Source).
- 4.2 billion people access social media sites via mobile devices (Source)
- 95% Of Facebook users log into their accounts daily (Source)
- 27% of total U.S. internet time is spent on social networking sites. (Source)
- Social media produces almost double the marketing leads of trade shows, telemarketing, direct mail, or PPC. (Source: Source)
- 52% of marketers cite difficulties in accurately measuring ROI as their biggest source of frustration in social marketing. (Source)
- 52% of all marketers have found a customer via Facebook in 2013. (Source)
- More than 23% of marketers are investing in blogging and social media (Source)
- 30% of traffic from social media is from SlideShare.net (Source)
- 53% of social media marketers don’t measure their success. (Source)
- 53% say a Youtube Video influenced their purchase at least once (Source)
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Gathering the stats for this article was very revealing.
It was funny to see to see how some people bash email for being an “old technology”, but ignore to see the ROI of it. Old technology doesn’t mean obsolete technology, and new technology doesn’t mean it’s going to be a cash-cow you can milk at your will.
We are big fans of email marketing, that’s why we’ve built PadiAct, but that doesn’t mean we don’t find social media valuable.
A smart marketer should know how to use different marketing channels to drive more conversions. Conversion isn’t as easy as 1-2-3. You need to influence decisions over multiple marketing channels.
We don’t have favorite channels, we only care about what brings in revenue.
That’s why we are going to use whatever works for us and brings in more revenue.
For us, at this moment email is way more valuable than social, but we don’t neglect the fact that social media is a new opportunity for businesses to make themselves more visible, that’s why we keep a social appearance.
Which one do you prefer? Social media or Email? Which one brings in for you more business? Which one has better ROI?
Let us know through a comment.
